...to think British soaps dont help people to realise they are in a dysfunctional relationship.

Reading the relationships boards it is very clear a lot of people do not realise they are in abusive / dysfunctional relationships.

The channel has been left on corrie at myHouse (i dont want normally) and it is just shouting, deceit and no respect, game playing mentioned as normal.

Im not saying people will think soaps are real, but that if theyve never know a different type of relationship other than one which makes them very unhappy, soaps normalise this rather than making people think actually there are better.

I'm not sure I agree but I do think soaps give fuel to the fallacy that love will conquer all in particular make some spectacularly messed up people fully functional again. You'd have to be a pretty thick quite romantic to think that marrying someone who had gone up the aisle five or six times before he was 40 (Steve Macdonald) and had recently displayed self-destructive addictions was a great idea . Hopefully, everyone is as sensible as me and just enjoys Norris's asides and the cat fights...

I think soaps have influenced the way people behave in relationships and the way they express those emotions (loudly and dramatically). EastEnders is a particular offender. I miss old style Corrie which was full of elderly eccentrics making snarky asides about each other. Current Corrie is very young and very (dysfunctional) relationship driven - the humour is all but gone.

I don't know if this has much to do with the question, so I guess what I'm trying to say is that soaps dramatise dysfunctionality and make it more normative.

Well no, people probably shouldn't base their lives on soaps, but realistically we are social beasts and we are built to be influenced by the examples we see around us, whether those be real or fictional.

im currently doing the freedom program media has a lot to do with how we perceive healthy relationships A LOT

many people dont live outside there own heads much and they still believe that its all based on true life what they fail to realize that while it might be true for some people its a, not true for all and b, not what real life should be

They are hopefully harmless for adults but it does worry me the number of children who watch them. If can't be helpful for that to be normalised while people are forming their ideas about what is healthy and what isn't.